Logical Reasoning

PT104 · S4 · Q15 It is often said that beauty is

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It is often said that beauty is subjective.

Conclusion

Beauty is not subjective (it's objective).

Evidence

If you look at what earlier cultures considered most beautiful, you'll be stunned by how similar it is to our standards of beauty. What was considered beautiful then is still considered beautiful now.

Evaluate

Given That [evidence] Earlier cultures seemed to share similar standards of beauty with our current society

How Can We Still Argue That [anti-conclusion] Beauty is subjective?

I guess we could say that the standards then and the standards now are both subjective, but they happen to match.

For example, it might be the case that an answer to the question "which flavor of ice cream is the best?" is subjective, even if an entire school bus full of 3rd graders comes to the consensus of "chocolate".

Maybe it's even causally related. Like the answer to the question, "Which sport is better: basketball or baseball?" is subjective, but maybe me and my dad and his dad and his dad all pick baseball, because each of us was raised in a house that revered baseball.

In that way, the fact that our Dad's subjective preference was for baseball may have influenced our subjective preference for baseball. The fact that everyone in our family seems to prefer baseball doesn't make that an objective (or hereditary) evaluation. It could just be that one person's subjectivity gets carried down the line and impacts others'.

Goal

Stay flexible, and look for a way to explain how .

15.

Which one of the following statements, if true, most weakens the argument?

Few contemporary artists have been
Strengthens
This helps rule out the idea that modern artists conceptualize beauty similarly to how earlier artists did because they've learned the earlier standards of beauty through significant exposure to their art. In other words, if people on deserted islands with no contact with each other keep coming to the same conclusion, that feels more like an objective reality. The more cutoff modern artists are from earlier artists, the more this author can sell beauty as an objective idea that we all recognize (rather than the potential alternative explanation for consistent standards of beauty through the years -- each culture learns its standards of beauty from exposure to the previous cultures')
5% picked this
The arts held a much
Out of Scope: important place
We're only discussing whether similar standards of beauty between now and then indicate that beauty is objective, rather than subjective. Whether the arts held a similarly important place now vs. then is irrelevant to that matter.
3% picked this
Correct
Our own standard of beauty
Why this is right
This offers an alternative explanation for why our culture's standards of beauty match those of earlier cultures: it's not because beauty is objective; it's because the subjective standards of beauty operational in earlier cultures strongly influenced our own standards of beauty. This is essentially saying, "I'm a baseball fan because my dad was. He was because his dad was. And so on ... " (By the way I hate baseball and am disgusted every time I type these words. Phew. Had to get that off my chest.)
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
64% picked this
Much of what passes for
Out of Scope: important work
Similar to (B), the concept of "importance" is irrelevant to this conversation. We're only debating whether the existence of similar standards of beauty indicates that beauty is objective, rather than subjective.
24% picked this
In most cultures art is
Out of Scope: ownership of art
This argument isn't about who possesses art; it's about the overall culture's standards of beauty. In most high schools, only a small group of people get to date the head cheerleader or Prom king/queen, but it can still be true that the majority of the school would accept that the Prom King / Queen fulfill the accepted standards of beauty. If someone compared what were considered the most beautiful artworks of a previous era with those of the modern era, this argument is saying we would be struct by how similar the standards of beauty are. That is regardless of who actually owned / owns these pieces of art.
5% picked this

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